Willem de Kooning was a renowned American-Dutch painter that helped form the Abstract Expressionist movement. His gestural works—which were loosely based on figures, landscapes, and still lifes—helped establish a distinctly American style of painting. Perhaps De Kooning’s most famous series were his Woman paintings, inspired in part by Pablo Picasso’s work, they featured a wholly original approach to deconstructing the figure. “I don't paint with ideas of art in mind. I see something that excites me. It becomes my content,” the artist once explained. Born on April 24, 1904 in Rotterdam, Netherlands, De Kooning went on to study art in his hometown before traveling to the United States as...